Obviously we will very often have many applicable options from the different answers, and no particular need to pick the "most authoritative"; however it would be informative in answering/researching questions to know where to begin with respect to 'who' we should look to for background data.

2 Answers
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I don't mind having my advice not accepted because it's something my grandpa told me, but I don't think it should be shunned or downvoted because it's not peer reviewed. As Chesterton wrote, 'tradition is the democracy of the dead'. If it worked for my ancestors that's peer review enough for me!

I actually like including the wisdom of my father or an ex-girlfriend's grandmother; nonetheless, I am directing this question more toward how to meet the first requirement of posting questions and avoid overtly "general reference" questions while guiding people away from trivial sources (i.e. the internets)
– mfgJun 10 '11 at 15:32

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@mfg So are we going to be able to close as "General reference" when the site goes live? I think people so far have been doing a good job of answering based on their own personal research/experience/tradition. I'll do a quick google search just to make sure I'm not giving overtly bad advice or lying (like I almost did on that compost tea question), but cutting and pasting is abhorrent to my sensibilities (as a programmer at least).
– Peter TurnerJun 10 '11 at 15:38

that's a hard question to answer, you might pose that on its own here on meta (rather than have you and I carry on in comments)
– mfgJun 10 '11 at 20:05

This is really useful and I think we should adopt it here too. So, you are allowed to quote your grandfather (personal anecdotal), but it will be looked on more highly if you use or confirm the anecdote by a source higher up. This is more forgiving than Skeptics.se which would require on of the top 2 as a precondition to add an answer.
– LisaDec 11 '11 at 23:22